Bracewell LLP

Terrific insight from Jeff Holmstead on EPA’s latest SIP decision. The EPA is advancing a novel constitutional argument as it evaluates state plans under the Clean Air Act, raising new questions about how federal regulators assess plant closures tied to emissions compliance. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gFVDtrBY

The PTAB almost ran out of appeals to decide. Last April, the Board's administrative patent judges were instructed to ramp up their ex parte appeal output to meet an ambitious new pendency target. Judges were pulled from AIA work — made available in part by the collapse in IPR filings I've been tracking — and decisions surged. For eleven months, the Board was deciding roughly 250 more appeals per month than it was receiving. The inventory of pending appeals fell from a peak of 4,855 to a low of 1,866, a 62% decline in fifteen months. At the surge-period burn rate, the Board was about seven months away from running out of cases to decide. There are early signs that may not be happening. The Board's April 2026 statistics show a sharp pullback in decisions, back to pre-surge levels, while new docketing ticked up slightly. The inventory has stabilized, for at least a month. But behind the numbers, there's an interesting story. The same pool of APJs who had been producing 500+ decisions a month is suddenly producing around 320. At a rough approximation of 25 judge-hours a case, that drop represents something like 5,000 judge-hours of work capacity that simply didn't show up in the April output numbers. Either that capacity was redirected to other work — which seems unlikely, given that IPR filings are at historic lows and the Director is now handling institution decisions himself — or ex parte appeals suddenly started taking significantly longer to decide. My understanding, based on conversations with former colleagues, is that the Board has implemented changes to its deliberative process aimed at improving decision quality, which are also increasing the amount of time and resources each appeals panel devotes to its cases. Whether those changes actually move the needle on quality remains to be seen. For what it's worth, I never thought the PTAB had a quality problem to solve. The Federal Circuit affirms the PTAB at an exceptionally high rate (~85% in 2024), not the track record of an institution with a quality problem. If the new process does improve quality at the margins, or results in more thorough decisions that better explain the outcome to the applicant, the tradeoff may be worth it. If it doesn't, the net effect is that the Board is spending significantly more resources to produce the same decisions it was already getting right, and a near-crisis in appeals inventory has been resolved mostly by making government less efficient.

Excellent opportunity to join our accounting team in Houston!

Congratulations to Oliver Irwin and Tom Swarbrick, whose team has been named a finalist for Energy/Infrastructure Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards 2026! The nomination recognizes the team's work on the financial close of the 2-GW Al Sadawi solar PV project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the world's largest solar plants in development. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gFUeDiRJ

Well, this is very welcome news. A strong showing from the Bracewell team, with four lawyers recognised in Lawdragon’s inaugural 100 Leading Lawyers in the Middle East. A huge thank you to our clients, who continue to develop and finance many of the most significant energy and infrastructure projects in the region (and beyond). It is a privilege to advise them. #bracewell #lawdragon #constructionlaw

We were delighted to support Trafigura on this important transaction with the Republic of Gabon through our London and Paris offices. This was a great opportunity for us to leverage the market leading experience of our Francophone Africa upstream oil and gas practice in order to deliver an excellent result for our client (in a very short space of time).

Big push to get Soul Foods Birstall site ready for tarmac on Friday. # #mcfaddenbuildingandcivils